SlingCatcher brings PC-to-TV video for $200

The makers of the popular SlingBox have announced a new product at CES: the …

Sling Media burst onto the computer-television convergence scene a couple of years ago with the SlingBox, an ingenious device that allowed "place-shifting," or the viewing of the owner's television signal from any place that had an Internet connection. We're big fans of the SlingBox here at Ars, and we can say that we've tested it successfully across the Atlantic ocean (Boston to London streaming, 400K/s, good quality). The SlingBox is a solid product, so we have big expectations for the newest edition of the family: the SlingCatcher.

Might Sling Media have beaten Apple to the punch?

The premise is simple: instead of streaming your TV across the 'net to PCs (as with the SlingBox), the SlingCatcher does the opposite by streaming your PC's videos to the TV. The SlingCatcher is expected to retail for under $200 some time in the middle of 2007; it will come with HDMI and component connectors and will feature both WiFi and Ethernet for connectivity.

SlingCatcher represents a different approach to the merging of television and computers than other attempts, such as Microsoft's Media Center and Apple's upcoming iTV . The former uses a Windows PC as a personal video recording device, and can stream video—although unfortunately not videos encoded with DivX or Xvid—wirelessly to a television through the use of a Media Center Extender such as the one found in the Xbox 360. Apple's solution leverages the iTunes Video Store to allow users to view content that they have purchased online, but it is build atop QuickTime and is not expected to play or stream video in other formats.

The SlingCatcher, on the other hand, is media-agnostic. It doesn't care what codec videos are encoded with, nor whether or not they have been purchased from an approved online store. It is designed to take video output and stream it, which means that you could use the SlingCatcher with video purchased from other online services, such as the iTunes Store or CinemaNow. In this way, the SlingCatcher may turn out to be a one-size-fits-all solution in a field populated with specialty products.

An optional hard drive add-on is also planned, which will be used to store content purchased from Sling itself via their web site, although Sling hasn't announced any deals with content providers as of yet. Personally, we're hoping that the optional hard drive could also be used to store videos from users' PCs, just to help with buffering. No word on that yet, however.

The SlingCatcher will offer a feature called "Clip+Sling," which will allow users to not only view clips of shows from Sling's site, but also create clips of their own and share them with friends over the Internet.

The SlingCatcher

More importantly, SlingMedia's new product looks to be the first product announced this year that may finally scratch the PC-to-TV itch. Sling Media co-founder Blake Krikorian says that his company wants to work with content media owners to ensure that the issue of copyright infringement does not rear its ugly head, but it remains to be seen whether or not the major networks will consent to partnerships with Sling Media. If SlingCatcher is a success, our bet is "yes."